


Pointless

by PsychicAbsol



Series: Points! [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Abandonment, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Mild Language, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 12:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4666509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychicAbsol/pseuds/PsychicAbsol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“At which point do efforts become futile? At which point does a justification become an excuse? At which point does rejection become abandonment? All through her life, Billy believed she knew the answers, but that did not mean she had to use them to improve it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pointless

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Part of the “Point” universe/series. Backstory of Billy Jo Graham, ex-friend of Roxie and constant source of trouble.

At which point does your life become pointless? At which point do you realize that for all that you have accomplished, it will be an effort in vain in the end, a meaningless endeavor into the realms of eternity? 

For Billy, the answer seemed very obvious. From the very beginning. There just was no reason to anything that existed. There was just no point to anything one could do, so why bother with it, at all? 

These were pretty harsh and grim thoughts, and they were obviously not the thoughts any young, mentally healthy girl should have. Billy was no exception, she didn’t start outright depressed, or however one would like to call her mental state. Even though she started out with a less than usual family constellation, she was an ordinary child. 

She was the second-oldest child of a patchwork family where no one could be so sure of the factual relationship they shared with each other- or the identity of their male parental figure, for the matter. Billy was fairly sure from the beginning that she and her older brother Mike shared a father, but the same couldn’t be said about her younger siblings, never mind her step-siblings. The kind of family she grew up in was the kind where no one stayed for long, where bonding never happened. Could not happen, for the person you had taken to your heart today could be sleeping under someone else’s roof tomorrow. Not that it mattered, really. In the part of Virbank she grew up in, no one ever left. They changed addresses, changed houses, changed families, but never truly left. 

So it bothered her that Mike called out to her, when she approached the front door, after she had come home from school one spring afternoon, having dumped her backpack into the hallway. “Where are you going?” 

She glared backwards. “Why do you care?” She sneered. As far as she knew, she was not on babysitting duty today. 

Mike momentarily blanched, before backing away. “I just wanna know where you’re going.” He repeated his question, short, messy black hair falling over his eyes. 

“To Trev.” She answered in the most obnoxious voice she could master. Trev was her father, and he lived at the other end of the street. Whenever she could, she visited him and whoever he called his significant other at the moment, and the kids and Pokemon that were swarming his apartment. Most often, she did not need a reason to visit him, he was, after all, her father, and that was reason enough in her mind. But today, her excursion was justified, as she was bringing back exceptionally good midterm reports. She was no teacher’s pet, no one from her neighbourhood was, but there were things she was just _good_ at, and she saw no reason not to use her talents. 

She didn’t bother ringing the bell. She never even bothered announcing her visits. She just came barging in, kicking off her dusty sandals as she maneuvered around the plastic bags and cigarette stubs, and found her father reclining on the couch in the living room, slippers barely hanging onto his feet anymore, beer can in one hand, the other firmly grasping his harmonica. 

For as long as Billy could remember, there had always been music in her dad’s home. It was not always family music. Often, it was his radio blaring semi-popular pop music mixes across the hallway, or his old record player turning round and round for hours, replaying the same piece of music until someone tripped over the cable. 

But whenever her dad actually put the harmonica to his mouth, and started playing, all inhabitants gathered around him and listened, Pokemon, children and pre-teens alike. It was these times that Billy came over for, to listen and enjoy something that she had no luck ever experiencing at home. It was the reason she loved choir lessons at school, because they gave her a similar calm, relaxed feeling. It was the reason she still felt that there was something in the world she could rely on, whenever everything else was shifting away from beneath her feet. 

And her father, who might have trouble remembering the names of all the kids and step-kids and acquaintances that stepped through his life and home, still did not fail to notice the glimmer in the eyes of his daughter whenever he played. And while he might not have had many chances to fulfill his role as a parental figure, he knew when he had a chance to make amends. 

He did not listen when she shoved the school report into his face, pointing out the well above average marks and the teacher’s comments on her calmness and willingness to fit in. He let her talk and gush and gossip over her teachers and the other girls at school, all pretty and shallow and pretty. He waited till she stopped talking, a method he had practiced with nearly every female that had stepped into his life. 

Then he fished out his wallet, and shoved three notes into her tiny hands, with numbers on them that were nearly too big for a kid her age to understand. He ignored the wide eyed stare she gave him, took a long puff from his cigarette and smiled through the stubble. “Buy yourself an instrument, Bill.” He had said, smirking. “Buy whichever one you want. Practice. Practice and become good at it. Practice, until you become really good at it. But never forget to enjoy it. Make music, make good music, and enjoy it.” 

He might have said something more, but a violent cough caught his throat, and Billy flew off his lap like a glass tipped over. She was out of his house as unnoticed as she had come into it, already going over the various options this unexpected gift had given her. 

In the end, her choice had been a fairly natural one. She did not want to play an instrument the bitchy girls in her class would play. Girls played the flute, or the piano, or the violin. Girls played pretty, fine, classy instruments, instruments that were extraordinarily boring in her mind. She wanted to play something that was mostly played by boys. Boys played the guitar. And thus, the guitar it was. 

Her mother never bothered to ask where her new instrument come from. And even if she had asked, the answer Billy would have given her-the plain truth, actually, would have posed no problem. Her mother never seemed to bother with the affairs of her kids, as long as their behavior did not interfere with her own lifestyle. If Billy had learned anything from her mother, it was that even the people who loved you could be uncaring about the things that defined you as a person. She never blamed her mother for it, though. Nothing was stable in her mother’s life, and so it seemed to be too much to ask of her to remember her own kids’ hobbies. If anyone ever asked her, she would never have known about her older daughter’s musical talent. She would have only asked where the noise came from. 

Scene Change

She had known something to be up when her brother started locking himself up in his room. That was so highly out of the ordinary, not only for him, but for the world she had grown up in generally, that she knew this to be something different. She herself was scraping the beginnings of puberty, and yet she still hadn’t sloughed off the question as to what there was to be so fascinating about boys. 

Of course, she was not as naive as to have no idea about what her brother was actually reading, whenever he was all alone in his room, shutting off not only her, but their younger brother and step-brother as well, who had more tangible rights to enter the room they shared as well. She, smirking, supposed he wasn’t as much reading as he was looking at pics, and later, looking at the real thing, as the kids of her neighbourhood were prone to early attempts, and, likewise, early failures of various kinds. 

As no one ever left the microscopic universe she grew up in, she knew who her brother’s first girlfriend was. She was glad it wasn’t one of the real whores, but a pretty nice girl, actually, who wasn’t in someone else’s pants every two weeks. She might have only been his younger sister, but she still felt that it was partly her job to make sure that he ended up in good hands. 

It was an afternoon, an ordinary, boring, eventless afternoon so far, when the flat was unusually empty. Her mom was whereever she was, her younger siblings were outside, either playing football or setting up their pet Pokemon in mock-fights, leaving only her, Mike and Crystal, Mike’s girlfriend, at home. Billy was practicing, as she often was, silently drawing the strings and giving the music sheets in front of her a glance from time to time. Mike was smoking on the balcony, occasionally shouting profanities at his friends that were raiding an abandoned car for spare parts down on the street. Crystal was painting her toenails, bubble gum bubbles plopping off every few minutes. She was balancing some magazine on her thigh, leafing through the pages with eyes decorated by fake lashes. She seemed to catch something that sparked great interest, as she stopped painting her toenails and did not even bother waiting for the varnish to dry. 

Letting the magazine slip from its position, she called out to Billy. “Hey! See that? Wanna try it out?” 

Billy, still very much ensnared in her guitar play, did not even have the time to register what it was that Crystal wanted from her before the older girl was already halfway over her, hip bone pressed into crotch area and chest painfully smacked against shoulder. She didn’t even get to scream before luscious, red-painted lips pressed against her cheek, or tried to. Crystal had never specified what she wanted to try, so one could as well assume that she had wanted to try out French kissing with her boyfriend’s sister, but the world may never know, as Billy, still terrified of the sudden action, threw the older girl off her, nearly breaking her own guitar in the complicated defense move. 

Once her heart beat had settled, she found herself more angry than actually terrified, and she made that well known by hissing and cursing at Crystal, calling her names a girl her age should not know, much less use. “That was creepy, you asshole! Don’t come near me with your horny lips!” She hissed, wiping away any residue spit that might have lingered on her cheek. Angrily, she threw her guitar onto the bed with as much forcefulness as she could, without damaging it, and went to the balcony, where her brother was still joking around with his peers, comparing the exhaust pipe to certain male anatomical parts. 

“Tell that fuck bitch of yours to leave me the fuck alone, or else I’ll cut off that empty head of hers the next time she tries to molest me. Bitch.” She snarled, leaning against the balcony’s balustrade. 

Mike didn’t seem to register her presence at first, snipping off the ashes of his fourth of fifth cigarette. “What did she do?” He asked nonchalantly, still not bothering to turn around to face his sister. 

Billy shrugged. “Kiss me. Or something.” She grumbled, again wiping her face with the back of her hand. 

Mike laughed, clearly amused by the idea of his sister and his girlfriend getting it on. “Cool.” 

Billy slapped his back. “That’s not cool! That’s freaky! Tell her to stop!” 

Finally, she could see his face, and lo and behold, he was grinning. “Should I? Maybe I’ll watch…” 

She slapped him again, close to breaking off a lose pole from the railing and hitting him over the head with it. Her youngest step-sibling had almost used the gap to escape the firemen way downside once, and their mother had never bothered to repair it. “You’re perverted…” 

Mike grinned widely. “I’m a man. That’s what we are.” 

“You’re an asshole, that’s what you are.” 

Mike laughed. “”Don’t be a prude, Bill!” 

She simply flipped him off, then, not bothering to argue, or, hell, even talk anymore. All she wanted was to calm down, and she had her ways of achieving that goal. Music was the first and foremost one, but that solution was tainted for the time being, as was her room. As far as she knew, Crystal still lurked there, likely still painting her toes cherry-red, and still reading that magazine that claimed to give you fool-proof tips on how to seduce your boyfriend. And apparently, having perfect kissing skills was one of them. Too bad the magazine neglected to tell you that practicing with your boyfriend’s younger sister was not the way to go. 

That left the other obvious option, which was her father’s flat. She stomped out of the house, warm autumn wind flipping her ponytail around, until she fell into a steady trot, still hearing her brother’s voice calling out for the friends who forgot to cut through the oldtimer’s tires. 

The chaos of the hallway was nothing new to her. Pokemon defecating wherever they found an empty spot, naked toddlers jumping onto mattresses, the voices of international mothers all cursing in the same, universally known voice that screamed trouble. She fought her way upstairs in-between strollers and trolleys, and did not even glance when she saw yellow and black barrier tape cutting her off from one of the many doors. She knew the family that had lived beyond, but it was just another group of faces that had gone by, without ever leaving. 

She went up to her dad’s flat, sandals filled with dirt and tiny stones, and she opened the door. The very first thing she noticed was the smell, or rather, the lack of a smell. It was as if her father had stopped smoking from one day to another, and that was something Billy had never expected. She blinked, actually shutting the door behind her. A Purrloin sneaked out from beneath the cupboard and meowed at her, but she didn’t bother petting it. She could smell dinner being cooked- at least she hoped it was dinner, and not something else. Nothing illegal, no toddler hand having found its way up the oven. One kid, that might actually have been her cousin or a half-sibling, she did not know for sure, tucked at the hem of her skirt, but she batted its hand away. Aside from the general hustle of the kids and the home appliances, there was no sound in the flat. It was eerie, almost frightening, not to hear any music. 

She went into the kitchen where, well enough, the latest of her father’s girlfriends was surrounded by the three kids that were still in her custody, cooking something that looked and smelled like old fish. 

“Hey!” And when she got no answer. “Hey, I’m talking to you!” 

Billy jumped up backwards onto the kitchen counter, and snuffled, ready to spit into the frying pan. “Where’s Trev?” She asked. 

The woman rolled her eyes. “Gone”, she answered, her voice as smokey as the salmon. 

Billy froze. “Gone?” She asked, her own voice suddenly no more than a husky shell. 

“Yeah. Went somewhere. Went away. Left the house. I do not know where he went to.” 

For Billy, it was nothing new, even if it pained her to realize that her father had left her. After all, no one stayed where they were here for long, even if they never left. 

Scene Change

Despite the changes, Billy was not friendless. In fact, she had mastered the skill of appearing as normal as she could at school, and that, boosted by the fact that even the most hare-brained or arrogant school peers had to admit that she was a damn good guitar player, made her pretty much a constant center of attention and admiration even from the more wealthy pupils. Pupils like Nickolas Sheffield. At first glance, he seemed to be way too pretty for her to impress. Way out of her league. Dark blue eyes, shiny, flossy blond hair, always dressed in nice, clean clothes, the only son of elderly, wealthy parents that saw in him the heir they had been waiting for so long. He was an alien in her world, a being that lived and breathed and still did not seem to exist. They would never have become friends if not for the one thing they had in common, the one thing that bound them together like super-glue. That one thing was music. 

Nickolas, or Nicky, as everyone, especially Billy, preferred to call him, was a drummer. A drummer at heart, if his self-description was to be trusted. He was the kind of drummer that would gladly give his hearing for the right rhythm, that could switch from one beat to another in such a smooth way that you hardly ever noticed the transition. Unlike Billy, for which music was an escape rope- the only one, really, drumming was the only suitable way of rebelling for him. He did not have the guts to openly affront his parents, nor did he really want to. He liked his way of living, nevermind that he was spoiled, especially compared to Billy. He did not see much purpose in running away from them, or in offending his parents by acting out. Drumming was something out of the ordinary, something that no one expected out of a boy his class. And this attitude of trying to be something that was not expected of him was what had brought him and Billy together. 

Whenever she found the time, she biked half across the town, through busy streets and green parks, to where Nicky lived, in the more secluded suburban parts of Virbank, far away from the smelly docks and underground venues, where the houses were huge and the front garden alone was as big as any flat Billy was used to. Where flowers grew that she had never heard of, and where cooking did not consist of opening packages and pushing the contents into the microwave. 

Knowing that her only chance of staying in contact with Nicky was to pretend-play that she was someone better than her origin credited her, she put on the most polite face and attitude she could whenever she visited Nicky and his parents. She said things such as “thank you” and “please”, and always bid farewell whenever she left. She tried to make the best impression she could, for this was the only way for her to continue practicing together with Nicky in his own music room, various sorts of expensive music equipment littering the corners, making her eyes glisten with nearly unrestrained jealousy. 

In Nicky’s neighbourhood, people also arrived and left, but never with the frequency they did in Billy’s quarter. Whenever someone moved away, they went with a civil goodbye, sometimes even with a house party on their behalf. Whenever someone moved into one of the few vacant houses, they were affectionately welcomed and immediately invited to every barbecue that took place. It was a kind of amity that, while it was not entirely different to what Billy was used to, was still alien to her on a superior level, because the trust everyone put in newcomers seemed to be out of place. Where she lived, outsiders were eyed with disbelief and leeriness. She supposed that this feeling subsided sooner or later, but here, it never existed in the first place. Or if it did, it was so well hidden beneath decorated porcelain faces that she could not detect it. 

“Do you have new neighbours?” Billy found herself asking one day, looking out of the kitchen window and noticing that there were new curtains hanging in the windows of the house on the opposite side of the street. 

Nicky looked up from his pancakes, caramel syrup dripping over the edges. “Yes, we have. They moved in last week. Father and daughter, mother told me.” 

Other kids may have asked, then, where the mother was, as it was biologically impossible for there not to be one, but Billy did not question the constellation in itself. She had seen it, and its many variations, all through her life, families switching from nuclear to going nuclear to single to patchwork to broken up. For her, it was a fairly ordinary thing. Long before the concept of rainbow families entered the mainstream society, she had internalized the concept that a family certainly did not have to be mother, father and two kids and that family, rather, was anything the involved characters presented to be. 

Billy shrugged. New faces could mean a lot of things. 

“The girl is supposedly our age.” Nicky added, before shoveling another spoonful of syrup directly into his mouth, ignoring the pancakes altogether in favor of the sweet substance. Billy nodded her wordless approval, before glancing outwards, towards the closed curtains and the barely perceivable movement behind. She was curious as to what this newcomer could propose, but she had no idea, absolutely none, what the arrival of Roxana “Roxie” Toxico would actually mean for her, and her future. 

Scene Change

Billy was by no means a total perfectionist. That’s at least what she claimed to say about herself, because it seemed vain to appear as one. Still, she could be very well annoying whenever something did not meet her levels of expectation. While Nicky would always roll his eyes and mutter something about them doing slave labor, Roxie would giggle and ease the tension with a well placed joke, often hitting just the right strings to make Billy forget about her stress and grin. 

It was really nice for a change, the black-haired girl mused, to have a female friend who not only shared her adoration for music, but who seemed to get so many of her problems, without being tainted by the murkiness of her own home. Family situation had changed again, there was yet another guy in her mother’s life, and yet again, her step-siblings were switched out, faces and names that she knew from the playground already that suddenly were right to take residence in her own room and bed. During these times, she was glad she was able to sneak into the school’s cellar, which they had taken over after boldly declaring themselves to be the school’s official band, a title they had only been given grudgingly after they had already proven themselves to be irremovable, and, more importantly, stubborn as hell. 

“We’re only a school band, no need to appear all professional…” Nicky muttered under his breath, obviously not aware of the fact that Billy could hear him quite well. 

“No need to? What are you, an amateur?” Billy asked, momentarily forgetting that, in all reality, that’s exactly what they were. 

Nicky raised his arms as if to pacify her, but then, unexpectedly, he threw his sticks downwards and made them crash so hard into the surface of his drum that it seemed to tear Billy’s eardrums apart. And still she laughed, for this was what made her blood boil, this was what caused the adrenaline to burst out of her veins, this was what she needed to free herself from all worries. 

“Okay, okay, yes, I got it, we’ll take a break, Nicky, no need to destroy what little sense of hearing we’ve left.” She grumbled, slowly letting the strap slip from her maltreated shoulders. 

“What?” The drummer asked, putting a hand behind his ear cup and bending it for emphasize. 

Billy humorously slapped his shoulder, before reclining to the outside area of the cellar room, and lighting a cigarette she had borrowed- borrowed, not stolen, from her older brother. 

She had not expected Roxie to follow her. Even though they were very close in school and most certainly even more outside of it, the younger girl liked to spend some of her time alone. Billy never asked what she did whenever she wanted to be alone. It wasn’t the kind of inquiry she wanted herself to be asked, after all. 

“Hey, Billy!” She called out, easily opening the gigantic metallic doors by herself. “Gotta show you somefing!” She squealed with joy, not even waiting for the dark-haired girl to turn around before she pulled out a red and white capsule from her sleeve. 

Billy was no Pokemon trainer, had by no means ever been one. No one in her family had showed any interest in Pokemon aside from asking what they tasted like, and how much money you could win in illegal mock-fights. Pokemon were just things that lingered in and around your apartment, and shit in it, if you were unlucky, and brought sicknesses along, if you were especially unlucky. She knew some kids to take a liking to a particular Pokemon, mostly of the cute and fluffy variant, but she herself had barely felt anything but bored apathy for any of them. 

So she was hard-pressed to do anything but shrug nonchalantly at the Pokeball her friend presented her with. “Eh, cool…what is it?” 

Instead of answering, Roxie giggled and pressed the button, releasing her new friend. Billy retreated quickly, realizing the Pokemon that she was just presented with to be a actual nuisance at home, since it tended to eat the various kinds of rubbish left behind the less than tidy families. 

“A Venipede…ain’t it a real cutie?” 

Billy glanced downwards at the bug crawling towards its new trainer, affectionately rubbing what she supposed was its cheek against Roxie’s ankles. 

“Yeah….I guess so.” Billy knew when to lie. It had helped every time she had been forced to lie about her home situation to Nicky’s parents, or when she had to lie about why there was no signature under her marks in elementary school. She could hardly tell her friend’s parents that she sometimes had to share her bed with her younger sister and her step-sister, nor could she tell her teachers that her mother hadn’t been home in three days. 

“You’re gonna train it?” Billy asked. For all she knew, the only purpose Pokemon served, besides being dirty and loud, was to win fights for their trainers and earn them money. 

Roxie nodded eagerly, petting the bug’s backside and earning a delighted, high-pitched squeal in return. Billy flinched, having only heard that sound whenever she accidently stepped on one of these buggers. 

“Good luck, I guess, then…” Billy turned away, taking a long, calming puff from her cigarette, before remembering an issue quite vibrant on her mind. “Don’t dare to forget the band over this, okay?” She grinned when she uttered her threat, but deep inside, she was serious. 

It was then, therefore, unfortunate that Roxie did not seem to catch the hint. “Sure.” 

Scene Change

They had, by no means, ever been the _official_ school band. It was essentially the role they fulfilled, but if they had to be given a title, it would be “group of laymen musicians who stormed the school’s cellar with their instruments and hijacked the equipment there to practice until they were good enough to perform publicly”. They never bothered asking for permission, nor were they ever asked by anyone to show off their talents. Whenever they played in front of more than one person that was not the overly annoying janitor, they had to be stubborn and obnoxious, they had to present the people in charge with accomplished facts, which, more often than not, meant that they had to build up their equipment in the matter of minutes and then refuse to pack when they were politely asked to move their asses. 

Sometimes, they were, in Roxie’s eye, frighteningly successful with their ambush strategy. 

“Half the city knows us now!” Billy exclaimed, eyes wide open as she let her gaze linger a moment longer on the stage they had just torn apart. It might not have been the nicest of all days for a gig- it had been raining non-stop, and even though they had been sheltered on the stage, they were still clenched with sweat, but so was their audience. And hell, it had not stopped them from cheering, screaming, hollering along with the refrain. Billy still felt the ringing in her ears, and her fingers were still vibrating within her gloves. She staggered along the park site, eagerly accepting the bottle of beer she had been given by a friendly spectator. She knew the taste to be bitter for some, but she had become used to it long before, and so, she found it to be her proper obligation to offer some to her fellow band members. 

Nicky opened his eyes wide and refused starkly, while Roxie was at least polite enough to take a sip, and shudder when her tongue curled up inside from the taste of it. Billy laughed. “And that’s not even the hard stuff, Roxie, girl.” She grinned, wrapping an arm around her friend's shoulder and taken a long, satisfying sip from the bottle. 

She stared up into the sky, stars not visible for cloudiness, but that did not matter, as in her mind, their stars were shining brightly anyway. 

“This is it, guys. We’re starting to hit the jackpot. First time someone actually wants us to play.” She waved around the little card she had been given, title, phone number and unnecessary info squished onto it. “I tell ya, we’ll be big one day.” She smiled brightly, almost falling flat on her ass when she lost balance, but thankfully, well enough stabilized by her friend, who returned the smile warmly. “We all will be big one day.” 

Scene Change

Billy was used to shit piling up in her life. She was also used to all shit deciding to ambush her at the same time, since fate did not seem to want to give her any break. Her mother’s new boyfriends always seemed to burst into her life when she was already in dire need of some stability, her brother always brought home a new girlfriend when she wanted to be left alone for a few days, and, of course, issues with the band always came up when she was somehow impaired. 

She had been trying to reach Roxie in vain for the past two days, growing more and more anxious with every missed call. On top of that, she had to share the phone with Mike’s new girlfriend Samantha, whose favourite quirk it was to stand beside her when she pushed the numbers and obnoxiously mutter about useless bitches that wasted her time. 

“If I’m so useless, would it kill you to get the fuck out of my face?” Billy snarled at her, kicking Samantha into the groin while she was at it. She heard her brother yowl from the living room, obviously having found his new favourite afternoon activity: His sister and his girlfriend fist-fighting. 

Somehow, Billy managed to shove Samantha out of the hallway, just the very moment her consequent phone calling finally had the effect she had been looking for. 

“‘ello?” 

Billy nearly jumped when she heard Roxie’s voice, momentarily forgetting over her excitement what she had been calling her for in the first place. “Roxie, shithead, damn, where have you been? I’ve been trying to find you since Thursday, we need to rehearse, concert’s on Friday!” She exclaimed, kneading her fingers. 

She certainly did not like the pause that followed. “Been at the league’s.” 

“League what?” Billy browsed through her brain for any possible interpretation of this, until she realized that Roxie was talking about the Pokemon league. Given her family’s attitude, Billy had never even seen any official league battle, much less come in contact with the league itself. “What have you been doing there, for fuck’s sake?” She asked, combing through her sweaty, greasy hair with her fingers. 

She could almost see Roxie there, biting her lips, fingers just as unresting as her own. “They’ve been looking for a gym leader.” 

Billy, still not fully understanding what Roxie was getting at, momentarily thought a gym leader had been missing and, for some reason that her tired, burned out brain had yet to decipher, Roxie had been chosen to look for him until she remembered that Virbank had no gym leader to speak of. Which opened up an entirely different sort of can of possibilities, none of them all too pleasant for the young guitarist. 

“What the hell?” She continued asking, actually shaking her head as she tried to clear it out of every unsettling idea, even though Roxie had no means to see her. 

Again, the shrugging seemed to be so real it was tangible for Billy. “They asked me…” 

“What the hell?” Billy was very much aware of the fact that she repeated herself there, but there was nothing else she could come up with. Her bran suffered a short circuit. “There was no other fucking bitch they could ask?” Or, heaven forbid that her friend had actually volunteered on her own account. Billy wasn’t sure what she would do, then, but given that she had a vast amount of nasty acts of recompense, she was sure it wouldn’t be nice. 

“Well, yeah….I guess not.” 

Billy just stared ahead. This was so fucked up, so insane, that there were no words even in her dictionary that she could adequately describe the situation, _and_ her feelings with. She took a few, deep breaths to calm herself down. There were a thousand things she wanted to yell at her friend now, but that wouldn’t help either of them, and it certainly wouldn’t ensure that their concert did not bomb harshly. “Okay. So are you back by Friday?” 

It took Roxie so long to answer that Billy was close to throwing the phone onto the ground. “Fink so.” 

Billy snarled “You better be. Don’t you dare to think that Nicky and I will run the show on our own, understood?” 

“Yeah.” 

Billy then hung up on her, without waiting for another response. Seeing Mike’s girlfriend still in the doorway, she spit at her. “Watcha looking at, bitch?” 

Samantha snickered. “Take a look in the mirror, _bitch_.” 

Billy glared up. She was so fed up with girls, so absolutely fed up. It was time, she supposed, for a change. 

Scene Change

In Billy’s life, it was never hard to find a boyfriend. After all, everyone knew everyone, and if you wanted to get serious- more or less serious, for a longer or shorter amount of time, you basically just had to ask. It was a more advanced technique than the elementary school note paper of “Wanna go out? Yes No Maybe”, but it served, essentially, the same purpose. For Billy, it was only a question of who she could tolerate the most. If she wanted to mess around with a boy, it should at least be one she did not have to suppress the urge the vomit around all day. 

She had the dull suspicion that the boy she chose in the end was related to her somehow, may it be that he was her half-cousin or a step-sibling of a step-sibling- the way the family trees were interwoven here made up for some very fascinating relationships, but that did not bother her. She had seen cousins of her getting married, and even that was not frowned upon. If anything, it made choosing the surname after marriage easier, since there was only one to choose from. 

Joe was a nice distraction from her band troubles. He was the kind of boy many girls fawned over. Dark-haired, tanned, muscular, a bit of a bad boy. He was already sixteen, slipping into seventeen over the course of their relationship and therefore, in her eyes, as good as an adult. He bought her drinks, he gave her attention, he commented her lipstick and eyeliner. And he taught her how to kiss, or at least tried to. She never liked his stubble, it itched on her skin, but for him, it was a sign of manliness, and for her, his property, it was a sign of the value she had come into possession of. For she was envied by the other girls, for catching the attention of someone that handsome. It may have been schadenfreude hidden beneath a mask of jealousy, but this was not the kind of riddle Billy bothered solving. 

It was the kind of pride she felt whenever she could say to her neighbourhood friends that she had a real boyfriend that made her agree to some fishy ideas of his. She later found out that Crystal was actually an ex-girlfriend of him. It did not bother her, she had long since forgiven Crystal. No one really kept grudges for long here, unless it tainted the family’s whole reputation, or it concerned money. Billy had seen whole family branches being slaughtered because of monetary debts. Not with her own eyes, but she had seen enough of it. 

The apartment was more crowded than usual when Joe and Crystal came to visit. Mike was there, Samantha was there- who might at this point not even been Mike’s girlfriend anymore, Billy wasn’t so sure, and her younger siblings Cameron and Stacy were there. One of her step-siblings was there, but no one was paying him any attention, as he was barely six months old and therefore, entirely uninteresting. 

Mike was fooling around with Samantha and Cameron, both having one big strand of hair grabbed in their hands and trying to braid it, causing Cameron to giggle loudly, while his sister Stacy was rummaging through a plastic trunk, looking for ribbons she could put into his hair. 

Billy rolled her eyes. “Stop this shit, man. Boys don’t get braided hairs. That’s only for pussies and fags.” She was spread out on the living room couch, her back arched in a way that looked extremely unhealthy, but made what little cleavage she had yet plainly visible. 

Cameron pouted, Stacy giggled and Mike shrugged it off, letting the half-braided, half-knotted hair fall back onto his little brother’s back. 

Joe took the chance to put his arm around Billy’s back, pushing her closer to him, while Crystal was balancing on the armrest on the other side, comically tilting from the left to the right and back. Joe grinned at this, before pulling harshly at Crystal’s own ponytail, forcing her onto his lap. Crystal shrieked, but it was anything but fear strengthening her voice. In fact, she seemed amused, even more so when Joe tipped off Billy’s center of gravitation as well, causing her to land next to Crystal. 

He leaned over the two girls, placing on kiss on Crystal’s wide open mouth, then one onto Billy’s forehead. 

“And now you.” 

Billy did not get what he was hinting at, so she just blinked helplessly. “Now what?” 

“Now it’s your turn to kiss!” 

Billy blinked again. “Why should I?” She sneered, while Crystal continued to giggle and wiggle, only enhancing Joe’s eagerness. 

“Because it’s sexy. I find it sexy.” 

In another time and universe, Billy might have flipped him of for his rude comments, but here she was, his girlfriend, and not at all opposed to the idea of making him happy. And so she shrugged, turned around and kissed Crystal, even if it was just a sloppy, clumsy kiss caused by unfortunate positioning. She would have tried making out with Crystal as well, if Joe hadn’t shoved them both from his lap. Not voluntarily, because it certainly looked as if he enjoyed the little show taking place just in front of his eyes, but because sooner or later, the girls would have noticed his excitement in a way too embarrassing way. Not that Billy did not notice either way that night, but there were still minors in the room, and as much as Joe enjoyed the situation, he did not want to get in trouble with his girlfriend’s mother. Not that anyone could claim that little Stacy hadn’t seen a penis before- with their lifestyle, it was likely she had seen several before that were way more impressive than his, but he did not want to be the scapegoat, in the end. 

Maybe Joe was, in the end, lucky, that the doorbell rang this very moment, announcing, quietly and underwhelming, the advent of another trouble of an entirely different scale. 

Scene Change

Team Plasma may have had success of varying degree in other quarters of Virbank. Where Billy lived, though, their door-to-door sermons went as unheard as they were laughed upon. Here, one was hardlined to find someone who professionally trained Pokemon, much less actually cared for them. When the first preachers came to Billy’s home, Mike scared them off by throwing a dead Lillipup after them, laughing his ass off while the man and woman dressed in old-fashioned robes hurried down the stairs with fright plainly visible in their faces. For the whole of Unova, and its society, Plasma may have been the truest embodiment of the bogeyman. For Billy and her family, they were laughingstock. They all had so more serious problems. Relationship troubles. Joe wanting more and more things that Billy wasn’t sure she could take. Her brother Mike starting to act out of character, again locking himself in his room and then coming back out of it, eyes bloodshot and talking about strange things his younger sister could not understand. Her younger brother Cameron starting random arguments with their mother over something Billy could not understand either. Sometimes, it was the way he wanted to dress, sometimes, it was the way he wanted his hair done, and every single time, it ended with their mother exclaiming that she did not raise any of her sons to be such a pussy, and Cameron running off into the bathroom, where he locked himself and cried for hours. These were the troubles Billy faced, and they were, in her opinion, much more real and down to earth than the claims of one group of clowns to free the filthy, stinky things that were Pokemon. 

So it surprised, no, nearly _shocked_ her when her best friend came to her with a confession and a plan one day. 

“You will _what_?” Billy asked, lipstick nearly slipping out of her hand as she prepared her make-up for another concert. It had come to the point where she neglected her usual school work for band practices, but in her mind, that was only good and well. There was no need for a formal education anymore when it looked as if she would soon make a living out of her real passion, which was still music. She was not dumb, she would get along just bloody well with what she had learned so far, and everything else would find its way to her, anyways. 

But all of that depended on the band staying together, of course. 

Roxie fiddled around with a lock, obviously not sure whether she should open or close it, until Billy got so fed up with her that she batted her hand away and rammed the key into the lock herself. “ _What do you think you’re doing there?” She hissed, not even bothering to look at her friend._

Roxie did not answer for the longest time. “I ‘ave to.” She whispered, voice meek. 

Billy shook her head heavily, trying to fight the tears that dared to enter her eyes at the thought of the consequences. “You’re chasing ghosts, Rox. Nothing else. These Plasma guys…” Helplessly, she waved her hands around. “Are they really worth it? Is it worth risking everything, risking the band, risking…. _us_ …” She dared to turn around for a small moment, seeing that her friend was equally emotionally touched and just as close to crying as she was. “Is it worth it?” 

Again, Roxie did not seem to want to answer. “You don’t understand. You…” 

Billy sighed, taking Roxie’s chin in her hand and smiled at her. “But I want to _try_ to understand.” 

The younger girl turned away sharply, sniffing. “I ‘ave to, Bill. There’s no more to it. I _have_ to. They did fings….evil fings…” 

Billy sighed. As enclosed as she was in her own cosmos, she wasn’t as out of the world as not to know what Roxie was actually talking about. The raids. The thievery. The hostage takings. The attacks. The murders, assassinations. 

The death of their champion. 

It might not have scared her. Heck, it might not even have concerned her that much. What had the champion ever done for her, the poor, teenager girl from Virbank, trying to make a living out of the only thing she really did well? All of that was absolutely none of her business. 

Her best friend gauging her eyes off over the death of a friend of hers, though, _that_ seemed to hit home closer than Billy wanted to admit. 

She sighed, reluctantly putting her guitar down. She fought with the words for a moment. “If you have to...then you have to.” She forced herself to smile. “Keep your chin up. I’ll take over for the while. Do whatever you have. Kick their asses. I know you can do that. You’re the strongest trainer I’ve ever known.” Billy neglected to tell her that Roxie was also the only trainer she had ever known, but she was certain this would not help her point along. “I know you’ll make it. I know you. You’re my fucking best friend.” 

When it seemed as if Roxie would burst into full blown bawling, Billy put her arm around her shoulder and held her like this for a long time. “But this night...this last night...this is our night. This is our last concert. So let’s rock the stage, right? Tear it apart until we’re the only thing left standing. And after that…” Billy paused. There might actually be a way she could help her friend with her vast street knowledge, acquired over more than a decade of living within filth and disease. “I might actually be able to give you some tips...ever tried to build a pipe bomb….?” 

Scene Change

Without their leader, it felt as if the band was nothing more than a headless snake, slowly left to bleed to death in the desert. All in all, it had been predictable, especially with the way Roxie had decided to concentrate more and more on the gym and less and less on the band, but still, Billy felt as if her life had never been less directed than during these years. Unova was in turmoil, or so it seemed, and while one might argue that the same was the case with her life, she herself would say that it was rather the opposite. 

Everything seemed to happen without her having any kind of influence on it, with her just floating peacefully besides it. She came home one afternoon to find both her boyfriend and her brother spread out on the floor, both laughing and choking and talking to each other in a way she had never heard of, and which could certainly not be the consequence of being strung out like a bee. When asked, her brother just shrugged and went into his room, a brown paper bag plainly hidden behind his back. Joe, on the other hand, laughed and threw a cardboard package at her, with words written on it that made no sense to her. “Try it out.” He said, winking. “That will cheer you up.” And she did. And it did. And her life floated on. 

She came home another afternoon to find her younger brother missing. When he did not come back by the next night, she asked her mother only to find out he had been kicked out of the house for all and for good. 

“I ain’t raising a faggot…” Their mother said, almost disappearing behind nicotine and the smoke of burned potatoes. 

She did not come home one afternoon, because the news were just so depressing. People being killed by Plasma left and right, and every day she feared she would see the one name beneath the many that meant so much to her and her life. No matter how much Nicky tried to cheer her up, she could hardly play the way she used to. Sometimes, it helped to take the pills Joe brought her every other day. Sometimes, it helped to drink herself half to death. Sometimes, it helped to ask Joe for stronger stuff, stuff that he never told her where he got it from, but she supposed it wasn’t the pharmacy. Sometimes, even that did not help, and so, she was left crying on the stage, with no one but herself knowing it was not an act. 

One afternoon, her older brother did not come home. They found him in the sewers, needle still sticking out of his arm. The news claimed that it had been a murder by the Plasmas, as they so often did to antagonize against the radical team. It was a ridiculous claim, without any proof and impossible to back up, but at first, Billy did not find the energy in herself to be angry. She wasn’t even sad. She was just apathetic. In this place where no one ever truly left, death was the only safe escape. 

But then, she was angry. Angry at the league that had now claimed two persons close to her, and she still did not know if one of them would ever return to her. 

Was it of any surprise then, that when Roxie _did_ return, Billy did not want to ever lose her, again? 

Scene Change

“Is it any surprise even the gym leader gets lost here?” Billy complained in a mock voice. Being taller than Roxie automatically made her the leader in the crowd, as she tried to figure out if they were yet past the main street or still somewhere they should not be, here in Goldenrod. 

These were the perils of international concerts, Billy mused with hidden glee. New languages, new cities, new stuff. She could hardly believe that she was here, far away from the world she had grown up. Leaving behind so much. She felt like an explorer, like a hiker conquering the highest mountains, like a diver delving into depths too dark to be safe. 

And the best thing...she was not alone. No matter where she went, there was still this hardened, pale hand in her own, fingers wrapped around her own, never letting go, no matter how sweaty they became over the course of several hours of fruitless wavering in the crowd. 

Billy laughed as they finally found their way out of the masses of people, coming to a halt at a little park, hair sweaty as were their hands, clothes smelling like years-old tobacco and exhaust fumes, and still laughing their heads off. 

“This is crazy….” She half-screamed, half-laughed, still not believing that they were not only in a different city, but a different country, a different continent with different rules, and still, people were screaming their names as if they had never been strangers. 

“Ya know what would be crazy?” Roxie asked her back, nodding to a shady tattoo shop only a few hundred meters down the alley. 

Billy took the hint and burst out with laughter. “You’re a fucking freak, Rox. But that’s what I love ‘bout ya…” She said, grinning, letting herself be dragged along. 

Many hours later, they emerged again, backs and arms and legs and everything hurting, but too high with joy to even take notice. 

Billy smiled, taking both of Roxie’s hands and, playfully, spun her around on the spot. “This is life, ain’t it, Roxie, old girl?” She asked, vision for one moment hidden by Roxie’s inhumanly long mane of hair. 

“This is life.” 

Billy laughed as she began rummaging through her backpack, producing what was obviously a heavy flask of a dark liquid and a wide assortment of different capsules, pills and powder. “And it ain’t ever stop, Roxie.” 

Scene Change

Of course, that was a lie. It changed. It changed in Khalos, somewhere along the road, when it could have been perfect in Billy’s eyes. It changed when she locked herself away, when she escaped through a window, when she booked a cab and went back to Unova. It changed when she did not even tell her family what had happened. It changed when she decided to dance to her own music. It changed when she found out that she alone was not even half as successful as she had been together with the band. It changed when she met Danny and, bored and lonely, ended up in bed with him. Several times. 

And it certainly changed, when, many, many years later, she ended up in Saffron after a custody battle, her daughter Tamara and son Ronald in tow.


End file.
